Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

Stars in His Eyes
What a delight to see Mary Rakowski and her StarBars make such a splash upon your pages [Food, "Star Wares," Juliet Fletcher, July 7, 2005]. I've known her for several years and always knew she'd be successful. It's always great to see someone local and real get their due. Rock on, Mary.
Jeffrey Sidelsky
South Philadelphia

Tour de Pour
I was very surprised to see that Juliet Fletcher gave the Once Upon A Nation storytellers a rating of "10" for historical accuracy [Cover, "Tour de Forced, June 30, 2005]. On the day that I made the rounds of the rounded benches, I heard countless inaccuracies.

The bench guy by the First Bank of the United States said that Ben Franklin attended the opening of the bank in 1797. (He died in 1790.)

I heard from another storyteller that people who suffer from the yellow fever vomit blood because their intestines are disintegrating. (They vomit bile because their livers are failing.)

Finally, I heard that the name of African-American sail maker James Forten's business was lost to history because his sail loft burned down after he died. (It was James Forten & Sons.)
Brian Cato
Old City

We rangers had a good chuckle at the pretzel gauges rating the different tours, in which the Independence Hall tour rated quite low compared to the others. You might like to talk to us about the whoppers we've heard from other tours as we've made our way over to the Hall. [There were] a lot of mistakes [in the article], but the worst one comes at the end. "Were it not for the concerted effort of activists over the last few years, the entire tour, start to finish, would be completely devoid of American history's dark grit." Bullshit. I've been doing tours of Independence Hall on and off for 20 years. All during that time, I've seen lots of change there, including concerted efforts to better tell the whole story of the Revolution, warts and all. Actually, that effort has been one of the constants there. The rangers are the ones who have been making that effort.
Thomas J. Degnan
University City

Black and White
Doron Taussig's "formulation" is fascinating [Fine Print, "The Verdict is In," June 23, 2005]. What made it a race moment for you? The article made a tacit assumption — that the "yuppie types" were white. Maybe those young black boys already notice that when people who don't look like them move in "their" neighborhood, services magically get better. Those same folk seem to care more not about them, but about someone's bicycle tires. That's a lame lesson to learn at 12. For me, the "race moment" was that it was her business if those boys hurt themselves. The world would be less weird if we all understood that.
Sabra Townsend
Oak Lane

Corrections
In [Cover, "Tour de Forced," June 30, 2005], the price to take The Constitutional Walking Tour was inaccurate. It costs $12.50 for a child between 3 and 12 years old. In [Naked City, "Behind the 8 Ball," A.D. Amorosi, July 7, 2005], Nelson Mandela's name was spelled incorrectly.